Manbearpig: Half man, half bear, half pig, but all global warming? South Park is a popular animated comedy series written by Trey Parker and Matt Stone. While South Park episodes are always entertaining on the surface, each show usually has a deeper, much deeper meaning and moral. A South Park episode titled Manbearpig, named after the monster in the episode, has a deeper and particularly powerful meaning. On the surface, the episode pokes fun at monster stories, politics, and Al Gore in particular. More deeply, however, this monstrous story can be read as a national allegory that hints at the dangers of global warming, the problems with the politics behind global warming, and the eventual doom we will all face if we do nothing about it. The story of South Park centers on four fourth graders, Eric Cartman, Kyle Broflovski, Stan Marsh, and Kenny McCormick, who attend South Park Elementary School in South Park, Colorado. Although much of South Park's humor is scatological in nature, the show is well known for its political satire. That is, “no matter how bad and scatological [South Park] gets, it's never just dumb and dumb. In addition to all the bathroom humor, the show is built on intelligent satire and equal opportunity” (Johnson-Woods 25). Strauss 1Jeffery Weinstock states in his book Taking South Park Seriously that South Park “wades fearlessly into the American ideological fray.” (14 ) The episode Manbearpig uses a simple monster story to address an important ideological issue facing America. Just like werewolf stories arose from fears about feudal society, and like the story of Godzilla was born from fears about nuclear war, the story of Manbearpig was born from the problem of global warming. The episode Ma...... middle of the paper .. ....plifies the use of monsters in literature. Manbearpig is a human-animal hybrid monster. However, like many monsters in Strauss 7 literature, Manbearpig has a deeper meaning. This episode of South Park can be seen as a national allegory that hints at the dangers of global warming, the problems with the politics behind global warming and the eventual end if nothing is done to solve the problem. South Park uses this monster story to illustrate the problem of politicizing global warming. He suggests that to solve the problem we need to step away from our political parties and actually look at real facts and data. The episode also shows how blindly believing in global warming can be just as dangerous as not believing in it. Hopefully one day the world can put political differences aside and we can all be eradicated from ManBearPig.